Posts Tagged ‘TISG’

What I find funny after reading Terry Xu’s Fb post (See below) is that I’m sure ST and other constructive, nation-building publications can say the same thing about TOC notwithstanding Terry’s holier than The Idiots attitude in his last paragraph.

Terry Xu should let sleeping dogs lie seeing that TOC cast the first stone (towards ST many yrs ago) a long time ago. Btw, I think I got grounds to KPKB yesterday to Terry about hypocrisy based on his comments about attribution. But as I know his writer and him, and respect what they are doing (most of the time) and because of the pressures that Terry faces in fighting the Dark Side , I’ll not talk further about the matter: let sleeping dogs lie etc etc.

After hearing complaints from my writers about how articles have been republished by The Independent SG with no attribution, I decided to take up my complaint with the publisher of the website.

Referring to the writer who has been doing that, I wrote, “It is fine if articles are written with reference to TOC’s site but if you refer to the months of postings, I have seen nothing of such. Can you please see that this behaviour stops?”

He replied, “Dear Terry, We have a ‘do-not-touch-TOC-content’ policy in place. Hence, I’m surprised that you are making such claims. In any case, all authors do declare their source for each piece they are working on and my editors do check for copyright infringement, attribution and accuracy. It may very well be the case of the newsmaker talking to two outlets at the same time. In which case, there is really no need to attribute to TOC.
In any case, if my writers do use your content. You can be rest assured that we’ll credit TOC for it. Chill my friend. We’re in the same space. Need to look out for each other.”

Note that all the articles from TISG is after TOC had published its, even the screenshots are using the ones that TOC had posted. I haven’t yet included the articles that are based on the video write ups posted on TOC’s Facebook page.

In response to the claims, the publisher has replied, “Dear Terry, after careful examination and consideration, we find your claims to be baseless and unfounded.”

UPDATE: The publisher even accused me of backdating the articles! Hello… I can’t backdate Google News, even if I want to.

So case closed it seems and business as usual. Nothing I can do about it, I suppose? And how can you be friends with such people?

Clarification: As I tell my staffers, there are a few type of articles.
– Opinion pieces
– Govt release
– News of events
– Public knowledge
– Exclusive investigative articles

We do not credit MSM for govt releases because it should be public knowledge in the first place and Govt don’t release them on their public site only after MSM has reported on it. News event, we sometimes don’t because we are pissed that only IMDA certified press are invited.

But if you do read our other posts, we mention clearly it is from the MSM that we are taking the quotes from and also we would correct when journalists from MSM write to us.

On FB, TRE and TOC and the Indian (I’m told, I don’t read it) the anti-PAP types are denouncing two PAP ministers for taking wefies with Little Rocket Man).

On FB in response to comments denouncing the PAP ministers:

There seems to be an assumption among people of a certain ideological bend that our ministers wanted to take the wefies. Has it ever occurred that Kim asked for the wefies as a goodwill gesture to say thanks to S’pore for hosting and paying his bills?

Adrian Tan

He’s a bit of a wimp for calling the anti-PAP types “people of a certain ideological bend” but he’s right about the assumption that the ministers wanted the wefies, and the possibility that Kim asked for the wefies as a goodwill gesture.

Imagine what would happen if the two ministers (not my fav ones*) said “No”.

Btw, since VivianB has also been denounced on FB, TOC, TRE etc of saying innocuous words like “impressive” when describing his impressions of North Korea which he visited recently. They want him to say, “The place is a shithole like Aljunied town council run areas” isit?

Our anti-PAP types hate the PAP so much that they openly want Kim to destroy S’pore because if S’pore is nuked PAP ministers will die. They forget that there are special measures to protect these ministers. How not to call these anti-PAP types, cybernuts?

The spate between no-class Charles Chong (representing the no-class PAP administration), and some lobbied (instigated? manipulated?) over-sensitive (Err did they watch the video of the exchange, or relied on hearsay? And from whom? PJ?) Oxford University academics (not colleges I note) and the non-entity Project Southeast Asia (more on this strange beast soon) reminds me of

It further reminds me that the PAP are missing another two tricks from darkest, dysfunctional Africa. Making bloggers Pay and Pay and tieing them up in petty details are what the PAP can introduce from Africa.

I had in Fighting fake news while raising revenue where I pointed out that our meritocratic scholars in the PAP administration could learn from Uganda in darkest, dysfunctional Africa: they could tax users of social media.

Another country from that dark continent has two brilliant ideas

Tanzania’s government has come up with a scheme that could prove even more draconian [referring to Uganda’s plan]: it plans to charge hundreds of dollars a year for the privilege of blogging. As part of new online regulations, bloggers will be required to pay hefty registration and annual licence fees that add up to roughly $920 — prohibitive for most in a country with a nominal per capita income of under $900. In proportion to GDP, the Tanzanian registration and licence fee would be the equivalent of asking Americans to pay nearly $60,000 to start a blog.

FT

Somehow I don’t think, the Idiots S’pore, Terry Online’s Channel or TRE (even if TRE’s pilot plan to use visitors’ clicks to mine crpto coins takes off) can afford the kind of sums required. Different for the SDP (CIA? Or Soros?) and mothership (George Yeo?Philip Yeo?).

And I certainly can’t be bothered with the paper work Tanzania is insisting on

What are the rules?

All online publishers including bloggers, vloggers and podcasters have up to 5 May to register and are required to pay $480 for a three-year licence, plus an annual fee of $440.

Radio and TV stations must also apply for licences to share their content online.

To get a permit, applicants must fulfil a list of requirements, like submitting staff CVs and reveal their future plans.

They will also have to keep a record of visitors to their site.

The regulations say the aim is to clamp down on “hate speech” and indecent material with the same standard being applied to online users.

They broadly define a blog as “a website containing a writer’s, or group of writer’s own, experiences, observations, opinions including current news… images, video clips and links to other websites”.

This is a pretty good analysis by the publisher of TISG. But note that he didn’t talk of TISG. My bet is that it’ll close soon because it’s been cleaning up its act and going to a sanitised place where the eyeballs of anti-PAP cybernuts no longer follow it. Tired of being invited to Lim Kopi?

good journalism is only good as a vanity metric, it is both subjective and unquantifiable. I am not even sure if it can be defined as a product that can be differentiated in a highly competitive marketplace. As a business, it is not defensible.

In this business, there is no customer lock in. People read what they want to read and often read news that comes in their social media feeds. Even the 30% die-hard opposition supporters read the main-stream media – they share articles widely about how the MSM is so biased and in the process making MSM more entrenched. Let’s not forget, ST has more followers that all the alternate media combined.

Secondly, readers’ preferences about what they read changes over time and it is difficult for a small media outfit to monitor the changes in reader habits. Besides, a one trick pony that only attracts a certain kind of readers is poorly equipped to monitor the changing trends in the space.

Therein lies their business dilemma, growing out of their niche would be difficult as it would offend their initial customer segment and their need for good well-argued pieces. They also brought on subscribers on the basis of good journalism, though very little, it is a market that they couldn’t forsake till now.

Paywall is a death trap

Nobody owes anybody a living and if you’re going out there to raise funds to bankroll your operations, you’ll soon find that you have few friends. Subscribers are finicky – they want good service, they want a certain number of articles to be published each day, expect constant uptime of servers and all these cost monies and you need truckloads of them.

Unless you have a well-oiled machine, you’ll soon realise that you cannot deliver on your promises as you will need to juggle between running a good sales team on top of a good editorial team. A major, if not impossible undertaking for a startup.

Long verbose articles do not sit well in a mobile device. People’s attention span is too short to go through long pieces. Singapore’s market of 2.3M readers and to target a niche segment of the total addressable market is really a death trap.

There are few contenders that’ll probably cover this segment and it could very well be TODAY and ST – it is easy to dismiss them as old media houses languishing in the digital age or that their pro-government Pyongyang styled media is completely out of touch, I would argue otherwise.

Recently, both TODAY and ST have published articles that are critical of the government and these pieces are shared widely by anti-establishment activists. They probably were on TMG’s heals to chip away the little market share she had.

All three, TMG, 66N and IQ managed to raise seed capital to launch their sites, yet they failed to scale their startups and there is a valuable lesson here for any startup founder – never put the cart before the horse. Only raise funds when you have a sure-fire way of sustaining the business.

The fundamental question we need to ask, is there really a market for middle-of-the-road, well-balanced, neither here-nor-there, running on the road divider kind of publication? Perhaps not, so, let’s not beat ourselves over it, though it’s sorely missed!

Something for TOC, TRE, TISG(The Indians) and the SDP website to think about. They get the bulk of their traffic from really cheapskate born-loser anti-PAP cybernuts and cyberrats.

These sites can use Coin Hive mining script and others, such as JSE Coin, legitimately to generate some money from their steady stream of visitors. Metrics published on the Coin Hive site suggest that a site that gets one million visitors a month would make about $116 (£88) in the Monero crypto-currency by mining. (BBC report).

The “I” in TISG stands for “Indians” not “Independent” because according to a previous editor (Indian) it’s “a bunch of Indians”. It could also stand for “Idiots”, though as there’s someone really smart there now, it’s unfair to use the moniker “Idiots”.

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I hope TISG gets taken to the cleaners if its allegations over the death are found to be untrue.

Seriously the publisher of TISG Kumaran Pillay claims he and his publication have progressive values. But obviously not enough to resist fixing (For thirty pieces of silver?) a real progressive. What do u think?

Last week I gave some opening remarks at a May Day commemoration event organized by Transitioning.Org, a Singaporean organization dedicated to helping unemployed and under-employed Singaporeans.

An anonymous writer from “The Independent Singapore” who was not even at the event put his own spin on this segment with an edited video clip on their website with a click-bait headline. Due to this irresponsible article, there are people in institutions connected with me who have expressed their concerns. I am also appalled at the misrepresentation by “The Independent Singapore”. Anyone who was at the event will know that I was not referring to NUH hospital administrators at all or the entire healthcare system, but calling out bad behavior by those who try to divide us.

Academics and professionals have a duty to support the “system” when it is doing the right thing and to raise our concerns when it is not, and to do so not just behind closed doors but in the public square. To paraphrase James Baldwin, “I love Singapore more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”

The anti-PAP internet brigade are KPKBing about censorship of or self-censorship by our MSM, ever since a well-funded pro-PAP click-bait site reported that ST and CNA had changed their initial reports on what the Minister for Pets said, taking out the comment: “You are not going to get angels in power all the time”.

The assumption of the PAPpy site, cybernuts and the saner anti-PAPies is that the Minister for Pets had really said, “You are not going to get angels in power all the time”.

Err maybe the CNA and ST reporters were practising what “The Idiots” — S’pore (TISG as it prefers to be known as) and Jafri Basron** are really good at: faking the news? And got caught out juz like “The Indians — S’pore”** and Basron?

So “The Idiots — S’pore” (or TISG as it used to call itself but now calls itself “The Independent”) is cleaning up its act: “We have reached a new checkpoint and we’re looking at how we can expand our editorials to cover a wider segment of society … asked founding editor Mr P N Balji and a veteran journalist, Mr Suresh Nair, to step in and to review the contents in the website.”

Rumour is The Idiots got told to clean up its act or else …. Well the words “a new checkpoint” and “review the contents in the website”, and stopping publication until the review is completed sure gives credibility to this rumour.

Looks like its loudhailing services* for the PAP administration were not appreciated and so two minders were appointed. I’ve written on Balji before (example). As to Suresh Nair this paragraph in http://www.writers.net/writers/83365 is interesting

Among his current editorial clients are NTUC Media, Petir (PAP magazine), North-East CDC and South-West CDC.

Whatever, I’m glad that time has been called on a publication that reasonable people can perceive as trying “to promote feelings of ill-will and hostility between different races or classes of the population of Singapore”. Harry would approve.

A reader of this alerted me to the exchange to show the depths to which TISG will sink to. To me it shows the arrogance of TISG: telling Daniel Goh that he should comment on TISG’s wall because TISG has “1m unique visitors”. P Ravi and Kumaran Pillay (TISG’s publisher) like to say that TISG has the eyeballs that others are jealous about, hence the criticism about its journalistic and editorial standards.

On the issue of eyeballs and ad revenue from eyeballs,, I’ve calculated that the amount of revenue generated by TISG from eyeball advertising is “peanuts”.

Soul selling for peanuts

Based on a reported boast that it has 3.5m views a month, it would make about $9,000 in ad revenue a month. Based on some more reliable data that it has about 670,000 views a month, the figure comes to around $1700 (Detailed post coming one of these days and these numbers may be refined slightly).

Note I’m only guesstimating only revenue generated from eyeball ads. I make no comment on revenues from other sources because no data is available.

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*TISG’s then lead editor, P Ravi, while rowing with various people recently (mainly from TOC allied people) on journalistic and editorial standards of integrity said (boastingly?) on Facebook: “Government and related agencies see us as a useful loudhailer.”For the context in which he said this, scroll down to almost the bottom until you see his photo, the text is somewhere below: http://www.theonlinecitizen.com/2016/08/09/tisg-lashes-out-in-response-to-ncmp-daniel-gohs-remarks-on-its-article/.

[I]t more favorably promotes content posted by the friends and family of users, not publishers (Our anti-PAP sites, like all socio-political sites are considered publishers or news sites by Facebook).

The squeeze continues for them when FB makes life more difficult for the freeloaders.

I’m sure Terry’s Online Channel (TOC) will sutvive because Terry and others there work for free or for peanuts, and because it has the goodwill of the influencers of the online community. But at the The Idiots — S’pore (TISG) which claims it’s out to make money, lots of it, even though it had to recapitalise itself last year, things are different. It has no goodwill left among the influencers after its xenophobic stuff or articles that were more fiction than fact.

By AMY HAIMERL

Mom-and-pop bookstores are emerging from the decimation of the last decade as they use social media to inspire a loyal customer base.

NYT Dealbook

And in India, Grofers is providing a grocery delivery service, relying on the traditional mom and pop (kirana)stores. And Amazon is testing such a system too in India. Meanwhile, 10i Commercial Services has a service enabling customers to place orders for goods not stocked locally, via a smart device belonging to a Indian local shop.

This time isn’t TISG using the Zika outbreak to cause divisiveness between the WP and a govt agency, the NEA, and between S’poreans and the NEA? What won’t some people do for eyeballs?

Seriously, what does the “I” in TISG stands for?

“I” in TISG stands for “Idiots” or at the very least “Incompetents”. It surely can’t stand for “Indians” as there are many intelligent, responsible Indians and there are now two non Indians at Team TISG.

Here’s the latest humorously sordid episode from the series The Idiots — Singapore. Aljunied GRC issued the following statement on FB following two articles in The Idiots — Singapore

There are some divisive stories going around online that NEA has not been assisting the Town Council in the fight against Zika. This is not true. We have been highlighting that Town Council and NEA are working closely to implement various control measures at the Bedok North Ave 3 cluster.

One main allegation is about NEA not giving MP Faisal informational brochures for Operation Kaki Bukit on Thursday, 1st September. This is not true. Town Council ran out of NEA brochures on mosquito-control and the 5-step Mozzie Wipeout for HDB flats, and only had brochures for private properties. One of our volunteers contacted NEA for urgent assistance and, despite being stretched by the situation, NEA specially delivered 500 copies of the HDB brochures to the Kaki Bukit Town Council office in the afternoon for the outreach operation.

Why then did we print our own flyers? Because we had to cover some 1,500 households in that one evening and we were afraid that 500 copies would not be enough. Our volunteers scrambled to produce a flyer putting together information from MOH and NEA website with easy infographics to get the message across. We printed 500 copies of this flyer, not to replace the NEA brochures, but to distribute them if we run out of the NEA brochures.

Mosquitoes don’t differentiate between blue and white; we all bleed red. We fight Zika together as one Singapore.

After the in-house report was published, a Workers’ Party volunteer who was involved in the outreach in the affected cluster on 1 Sep, private messaged us requesting that we credit the pictures used in the article accordingly, and also to credit an ex-NCMP in the story. We did as requested. At no point in time did the volunteer, raise any objections that the in-house report was inaccurate.

We assumed that the active volunteer represented the town council and therefore the report was accurate. We are therefore surprised that AHTC would raise the topic of ‘divisive politics’, when they did not do so when its volunteer got in touch with us when the first report was published.

TISG welcomes all parties who may feel aggrieved in one way or another by what we publish to contact us at news@theindependent.sg.

We will be happy to amend our pieces, publish updates, publish corrections, and even publish apologies.

We want to build awareness, not animosity. We will grant you the right of reply if we feel that you have unjustly suffered.

What a lot of bull from The Idiots — S’pore:

— Why was the in-house report worded in the way it was? So easy to have written about the issue as viewed from a WP volunteer without making it sound as though WP had issues with NEA.

— And this is really trying to be too clever by half (but maybe the eyeballs $ worth the BS even though it’s “peanuts”: $9,000 a month at best.)

We assumed that the active volunteer represented the town council and therefore the report was accurate. We are therefore surprised that AHTC would raise the topic of ‘divisive politics’, when they did not do so when its volunteer got in touch with us when the first report was published.

The publisher and two senior editors are experienced citizen editors with pretty decent track records at TOC before it became Terry’s Online Channel.

A critical FB post

This is one of the most half-assed takebacks I’ve seen, and smacks of the “rush to publish”. Two points for the editors to consider. 1) Did you contact the Workers Party to seek their comments before you published the original in-house report, and if so, did you give them reasonable time to reply? I’m assuming the answer is no, because you took the WP quote in your piece straight from this Facebook post linked below. “happy to amend our pieces” is one thing; you should be confirming the facts of the piece /before/ you publish them. https://www.facebook.com/aljuniedcommunity/posts/11647457569199702) Just because a volunteer from the WP contacted you and didn’t correct the record fully doesn’t afford you the right to claim that as a defense against erroneous reporting. If an official spokesperson or senior MP from the party or its committee contacted you? Sure. But one volunteer? You could also have taken that contact as an opportunity to clarify the party’s official response/position on the matter – but I’m guessing you didn’t, either. It’s sloppy journalism all around, and the tone of your response’s last two paragraphs suggests you don’t think it’s sloppy at all.

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And here I was, on Saturday, commending The Idiots — S’pore

Waz strange is that TISG is not using these facts to “attack” FTs to attract eyeballs; something that it was perceived to be doing in the recent past. Whatever, good that it is not trying inadvertently “to promote feelings of ill-will and hostility between different races or classes of the population of Singapore”.

It’s getting very clear that The Idiots — S’pore is trying“to promote feelings of ill-will and hostility between different races or classes of the population of Singapore” so that it can attract eyeballs. And that the Zika outbreak is juz another opportunity “to promote feelings of ill-will and hostility between different races or classes of the population of Singapore”.

So The Idiots — S’pore should cut out the pretence: “We want to build awareness, not animosity. Juz say: “We want to promote feelings of ill-will and hostility between different races or classes of the population of Singapore so that we can make money.”

And seriously isn’t it time, given the allegations made by The Idiots — S’pore against the NEA for the state to take action against The Idiots — S’pore? I mean Amos Yee was charged for a lot less.

But then remember this claim? P Ravi, while rowing with various people recently (mainly from TOC allied people) on journalistic and editorial standards of integrity said (boastingly?) on Facebook:“Government and related agencies see us as a useful loudhailer.” For the context in which he said this, scroll down to almost the bottom until you see his photo, the text is somewhere below: http://www.theonlinecitizen.com/2016/08/09/tisg-lashes-out-in-response-to-ncmp-daniel-gohs-remarks-on-its-article/.

Did you know that FTs account for 35% of the Zika cases here? OK 34.78% leh

Taz the conclusion based on the u/m facts reported in the FT

— the total number of confirmed cases rose to 115 in the largest single outbreak of the virus in Asia; and

— 21 Chinese nationals, 13 Indian citizens and six Bangladeshi nationals among the Zika cases in Singapore, according to authorities.

Emphasis mine.

Waz strange* is that TISG is not using these facts to “attack” FTs to attract eyeballs; something that it was perceived to be doing in the recent past. Whatever, good that it is not trying inadvertently “to promote feelings of ill-will and hostility between different races or classes of the population of Singapore”.

*Gregory (Scotland Yard detective): “Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”

Uodate at 2.00pm: Reader pointed out that the mozzies don’t like FT blood: Considering that 40% of the total population is foreigner, and 55% of the working adult population is foreigner …. this means that a smaller proportion of foreigners compared to Sinkies are being infected. Either foreigners have stronger genes or they exercise better mozzie control than Sinkies or the local mozzies can’t stand the smell/taste of foreigner blood.

Wee Kim Wee, not Ong Teng Cheong, was the first ‘Elected President’ of Singapore

Dr Wee Kim Wee and not Mr Ong Teng Cheong is the first Elected President of Singapore, a law don has clarified. Dr Jack Tsen-Ta Lee, Assistant Professor of Law at the Singapore Management University’s School of Law made this point in the website ‘Singapore Public Law’.

TISG

This is what Dr Jack Tsen-Ta Lee posted on Facebook

“The provision was carefully worded to avoid deeming Wee Kim Wee as having been elected, so although he exercised all the discretionary powers of an elected President, the first truly elected President was Ong Teng Cheong.” So how come the conclusion is that Wee was Singapore’s first elected President? I’m mystified!

On Augist 22 at 5.50pm To cater to a consistently high number of readers, we are migrating to a larger server. Our website may be inaccessible for a few hours due to this. We apologise to our readers. – TISG Team

The “few hours” turned out to be at least 24 — 40hrs No articles appeared on 23 August and only late on 24 August were articles posted.

As TISG prides itself on employing only true blue S’poreans (Has no choice given its tendency towards xenophobic* articles?), maybe it got some lazy TISG-reading S’porean cybernut to do the IT migration?

As commercially minded employers know, FTs from India are the best for low-level IT jobs like migration. Cheap and good.

TISG positions itself as a commercial site, not a socio-political site (Er so how come so many articles from a TRE hero, and TRELand cybernuts and sane residents?). That’s good news for TISG Team. A socio-political site would have found replacements for such goofing, careless, wanking S’poreans, assuming they were either subversives working for the PAP, not for the Cause, or that they were incompetent, lazy S’poreans.

*Aiming “to promote feelings of ill-will and hostility between different races or classes of the population of Singapore”?

Reporting a press release from the S’pore Heritage Society about the importance of preserving the Ellison Building*, TISG, a commercial site not a socio-political site, used a photo of the David Elias Building

This is Ellison Building TISG

Why so cock meh? The photo of the Ellison Building was included in SHS’s release.

This piece followed this

“STTA taxing junior team’s prize money to sustain its foreign players”. The truth (something TISG is increasingly having problems with) is that the money collected also funds our local athletes. And our PRC mercenary FT gladiators are also “taxed” on their prize money. These “taxes” go into a pool, which is used to fund STTA activities.

That’s locals funding FTs isit, TISG? It’s winners funding others. And like it or not, the gladiators have until recently been doing pretty well in winning awards .

But maybe TISG is alleging that the FT gladiators are not “taxed’?

The piece sounds like another one of its xenophobic (“to promote feelings of ill-will and hostility between different races or classes of the population of Singapore” isit? Why liddat TISG?) pieces aimed at attracting eyeballs.

Economy rice not enough to sustain brain power at TISG isit? In the above link I calculated that the ad revenue from eyeball ads ($1,700- 9,000) are Enough for “economy rice” meals for those working there.

*The Singapore Heritage Society (SHS) is deeply disappointed with the decision to demolish a substantial part of Ellison Building. A substantial part of the building will be demolished to make way for the North South Highway and will be reconstructed when the Highway is completed. It is located at the junction of Selegie Road and Rochor Canal Road and was built in 1924.

So TISG published another article: “STTA taxing junior team’s prize money to sustain its foreign players”. The truth (something TISG is increasingly having problems with) is that the money collected also funds our local athletes. And our PRC mercenary FT gladiators are also “taxed” on their prize money. These “taxes” go into a pool, which is used to fund STTA activities.

That’s locals funding FTs isit, TISG? It’s winners funding others. And like it or not, the gladiators have until recently been doing pretty well in winning awards .

But maybe TISG is alleging that the FT gladiators are not “taxed’?

The piece sounds like another one of its xenophobic (“to promote feelings of ill-will and hostility between different races or classes of the population of Singapore” isit? Why liddat TISG?) pieces aimed at attracting eyeballs.

Given that the PAP administration loves FTs and frowns on anything resembling seditious actions, it’s surprising that TISG’s lead editor, P Ravi, while rowing with various people recently (mainly from TOC allied people) on journalistic and editorial standards of integrity said (boastingly?) on Facebook: “Government and related agencies see us as a useful loudhailer.”For the context in which he said this, scroll down to almost the bottom until you see his photo, the text is somewhere below: http://www.theonlinecitizen.com/2016/08/09/tisg-lashes-out-in-response-to-ncmp-daniel-gohs-remarks-on-its-article/.

Given that Ravi keeps stressing that TISG is not a socio-politcal site but a commercial site, one can only wonder what it’s being paid to act as a loudhailer for the “Government and related agencies”? Commercial sites exist to make money (they hope), not promote causes.

TISD raises money

Funny that Ravi claims that unlike a socio-politcal site, “Commercial sites must produce what readers want and will come back to consume or risk going bankrupt.” because TISG had to call for a new round of funding from existing and new shareholders late last year because it had run out of funds. Obviously TISG wasn’t producing what readers wanted and they were not coming back to consume more from TISG.

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Do also read the link above for the comments it made to Daniel Goh about its 1m unique visitors. A reader of this alerted me to the exchange to show the depths to which TISG will sink to. To me it shows the arrogance of TISG: telling Daniel Goh that he should comment on TISG’s wall because TISG has “1m unique visitors”. P Ravi and Kumaran Pillay (TISG’s publisher) like to say that TISG has the eyeballs that others are jealous about, hence the criticism about its journalistic and editorial standards.

On the issue of eyeballs and ad revenue from eyeballs,, I’ve calculated that the amount of revenue generated by TISG from eyeball advertising is “peanuts”.

Soul selling for peanuts

Based on a reported boast that it has 3.5m views a month, it would make about $9,000 in ad revenue a month. Based on some more reliable data that it has about 670,000 views a month, the figure comes to around $1700 (Detailed post coming one of these days and these numbers may be refined slightly).

Note I’m only guesstimating only revenue generated from eyeball ads. I make no comment on revenues from other sources because no data is available.

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Maybe there is cash for being a loudhailer for the “Government and related agencies”?

And if there is, why is the PAP administration so cock to fund a commercial site that reasonable people can perceive as trying “to promote feelings of ill-will and hostility between different races or classes of the population of Singapore”?

I don’t think P Ravi and Kumaran Pillay know the ancient Greek superstition: Nemesis punishes Hubris. But at least one of them, an ordained pastor, will be familiar with “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.” (Proverbs 16:18)

What’s disappointing about TISG’s defence of itself is that it’s not enough to prove critics wrong: they have to be shown to be malign, jealous, dishonest (“less than honest” is a favourite) or stupid, or any combination of two or more of these attributes. Yup TISG sounds, feels and looks like a PAPpy of the Jason Chua variety.

But to be fair, maybe the people in TISG cannot prove critics wrong except by pointing to their eyeball traffic and by distracting from the real issues by sliming their critics. And the eyeball traffic is only worth $1,700 – $9,000 a month. Enough for “economy rice” meals for those working there.

“DBS helped sell junk Swiber bonds to public” was the headline to an article from TISG.

The article went on to describe three bond sales of Swibber bonds by DBS. It then went on to compare the sale of these bonds to another DBS product (akin to mini-bonds) where retail investors lost money.

There is a problem though with this analysis and comparison. The Swiber bonds were never sold to the public. As a ST article put it, “The Swiber bonds were available only to accredited investors – with net personal assets of more than $2 million – or those investing a minimum of $250,000.”

The TISG article never reported out that these bonds were only available to accredited investors – with net personal assets of more than $2 million – or those investing a minimum of $250,000. Its headline said the bonds were sold to the public, and this was repeated a few more times in the article.

Given that TISG is proud that it operates as a commercial site not a socio-political site, one can only wonder at the lack of editorial supervision given that the author “Eternal Vagabond” usually writes stuff that is against PAP administration, one would have tot that editorial supervision would not be so lax. Here the failure of editorial supervision led to misform. In fact the headline and article are defamatory. DBS could sue TISG for claiming that it sold these bonds to the public.

Update at 6.50am: Given that the writer does not even know that the other DBS product (DBS High Notes 5) is not related to junk bonds ( “This is not the first time DBS is linked to junk bonds”), my constructive, nation-building advice to TISG is to make sure the Eternal Vagabond’s financial pieces are vetted throughly. And if this commercial website can’t pay for such editorial expertise, don’t publish this writer’s financial pieces.

TOC is the name by which The Online Citizen is more commonly known. There are rumours that “The Online Citizen” name is to be dropped, in favour of “Terry’s Online Channel”. This change is to reflect Terry Xu’s alleged role at TOC. TOC is alleged to be a one-man show.

I can confirm that TOC will not stand for “Terry’s Online Channel” even though Terry doesn’t even have a dog helping him at TOC. It’s really a one-activist show. It’ll soon see its 10th anniversary (if it not already has) and I, for one, hope that it’ll stagger on. Hopefully, it can reinvent itself.

Meanwhile at the Indian TISG, P Ravi, the newly appointed editor has said because the Indian has given up trying to be a socio-political website, among the many other things it wanted to be.

— “We made certain deliberate choices and rebranded by changing our tagline from ‘Responsible, Intelligent, Robust’ to ‘News That You (our readers) Need;. That set the direction for us in the last 6-months.”

— “TISG is a news agency, not an institution which is entrusted to uphold democratic ideals.”

— “TISG is positioned to be a tabloid/magazine and not a socio-political website.”